This invention relates generally to electrically powered ceiling fans, and more specifically to ceiling fans that have one or more lamps.
Electrically powered ceiling fans often have a lamp or several lamps located beneath the fan blades and their orbital path of travel. Fan manufacturers have designed such fans so that light kits of different shapes and styles, and with different numbers of lamps, may be selected by the consumer at retail and mounted to the fan body during fan installation. The light kit is mounted to the fan only after the fan itself has been mounted to the ceiling and its switch housing wired to the building wiring in the ceiling as through a tubular down rod. Power to both the fan motor and fan lamp is thus run through the switch housing.
Heretofore light kits have been mounted to the fan following fan installation by connecting its wires to wires within the switch housing as with insulated connecters or tape. Mechanical connection has then been made with screws passed through holes in the sides of the light kit and the switch housing while taking care that the wiring remains bundled properly within both the switch housing and light kit. This has all had to be done by the installer while working overhead on a ladder from below. Often the installer, at least of the light kit itself, is the consumer itself rather than a professional electrician. The task of light kit installation thus has proven to be rather difficult, tedious, and slow. Furthermore, once the light kit is installed it is difficult to change the light kit to another design.
Accordingly, it is seen that a need has long existed for a ceiling light kit that could be more easily and quickly mounted a fan. It thus is to the provision of such that the present invention is primarily directed.
In a preferred form of the invention a quick mount lighting assembly is provided for a ceiling fan that has a switch housing that houses an electrical connector electrically connectable to a municipal power source and a threaded mechanical connector. The quick mount lighting assembly comprises a light kit housing with a bottom opening that may be positioned adjacent the ceiling fan switch housing with the housing opening providing external access to a switch housing mechanical connector. An electric connector is mounted in the light kit housing electrically connected to at least one lamp socket supported on the kit housing. The assembly also has a knob with a threaded shank sized to be passed through the light kit housing opening and threaded onto the switch housing mechanical connector. So constructed, the lighting assembly may be quickly mounted to the ceiling fan by placing the light kit housing adjacent to or against the fan switch housing with the light kit electrical connector connected with the switch housing electrical connector and with the knob shank passed through the light kit housing opening and threaded into the light switch mechanical connector.
In another preferred form of the invention a ceiling fan having a set of fan blades rotatably coupled with an electric motor housed within a motor housing, a switch housing mounted below the fan blades and a plurality of spring clips of an electric socket in an array about a threaded channel. The fan also has a light kit with an electrical plug with terminal blades sized and arranged about a central plug passageway to be plugged into the switch housing socket spring clips. A bolt is provided that is sized to be passed through the light kit electric plug passageway and threaded into the switch housing threaded channel in mounting the light kit beneath the switch housing.